


Bone Orchard

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Childhood Memories, Gen, caduceus didn't like the name bone orchard for his home, his father understands, his sister thinks its a stupid thing to be upset about, just a short and stupid little fic I wrote this ep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-14 23:43:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18486874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: "I'm from the Blooming Grove," Caduceus tries to tell the Blacksmith with the blank look on his face. "Uh, you might know it as the Bone Orchard.""Sound's familiar," The half-orc says, rubbing his head."I thought it might," Caduceus doesn't sigh even though he wants to. He leans down to Jester and whispers in her ear. "I never liked that name. It never stuck."





	Bone Orchard

**Author's Note:**

> Just so we're clear, the summary has almost nothing to do with the fic. It's just talking about how Caddy didn't want his home to be called something like the Bone Orchard and how his father helped him understand that it didn't matter. I really shouldn't be working on this because I have way too much to do already but I couldn't resist so I just made it really really short and shitty, much worse than I would have liked, so here we are.
> 
> If you need better context than the summary gives you, then go have a look at the newest episode when they're talking to the half-orc blacksmith who gave Fjord a hard time. It's late so I just wrote the conversation down from memory because it's LATE.

Caduceus had never enjoyed calling his home the Bone Orchard.

Orchards were for flowers to nurture and grow and develop into something beautiful. Bones didn’t do that. They rotted and festered and became one with the earth, but once bones were in the ground, they didn’t become anything more than mulch.

Flowers were something beautiful and Caduceus was all about things being beautiful. If they were beautiful, then they had a reason to be there. Caduceus always thought that his mother was like a flower.

His home was much too beautiful to be named anything related to death. The Blooming Grove told everyone what they needed to know- a wonderful garden filled with bright, blooming flowers. And if they were going to the Blooming Grove at all then they would know what lived beneath the soil already. No need to tarnish their home for the locals. The Bone Orchard was a terrible name- it reminded Caduceus of a dry desert landscape scattered with bones and the dying bodies of plant life. It wasn’t nice to think about.

When Clarabelle first heard about her brother’s little problem, she scoffed and clapped him on the back of the head, “Oh Caddy,” She had chided in that way all sisters did when they thought you were being foolish.  “Nobody cares about we call this place. We bury the dead and then we care for the flowers. It will be no different calling it the Born Orchard as it would be calling it anything else.”

Pouting in the way children did when they were confused and stubborn, Caduceus had stomped his foot and crossed his arms over his chest. “But I don’t want to live in a Born Orchard. We grow flowers, not bones. Why do we have to live in a place that sounds like death?”

“Because it’s a graveyard you dummy,” Clarabelle had rolled her eyes and walked away, leaving Caduceus alone in the grass with disappointed tears welling in his eyes.

His father had found him sometime later, a large tree of a man with gentle eyes and gentle hands and gentle words and crouched down beside Caduceus in the grass that barely came up to his ankles. “What’s wrong, child? Your sister said you were unhappy. Is there something you would like to speak to me about?”

Lower lip wobbling, Caduceus had crawled into his father’s open arms and rested his head on his shoulder. “Why do we have to be called the Bone Orchard? Why can’t we just be called the Blooming Grove?”

“We do not _have_ to be called anything,” Cornelius Clay gently smoothed down his son’s wild locks. “It is the locals who have named us and I don’t feel like we need to correct them.”

“But the Bone Orchard makes us sound really bad,” Caduceus mumbled into his father’s shoulder, voice muffled by his heavy cloak. “It makes us sound like we grow dead bodies instead of flowers and flowers are so much better than any dead body!”

“Do we not do both?” Cornelius rumbled, his deep voice shaking Caduceus to the core. “Flowers grow through the soil and grant us with their beauty, which is true, but it is the bodies of those who were lost that give us those flowers. If we did not give their bodies to the Wildmother, then there would be no Blooming Grove _or_ a Bone Orchard.”

Caduceus sniffled and rubbed his snotty nose against his father’s shirt. “But why do the people outside call us that? Why do they make us sound so evil?”

“Because they do not know what it is that we do,” Cornelius chuckled, patting Caduceus on the back. “They think that we take their dead, their dear beloveds that have left this realm, and bury them in the ground so we can watch over them and make sure they do not return as something unholy. They know nothing about the flowers and the herbs that grow in their place. They don’t care enough to learn. They bring their dead, say their goodbyes and forget all about this place. It is an orchard because we cultivate bodies and souls and what the Wildmother doesn’t take, she leaves to us, and their bodies become the soil and their soul becomes the plants and it’s a cycle of life that repeats over and over again.”

Slowly, Caduceus pulled his head away from his farther's shoulder and looked down at him with wide, watery eyes. “Do I have to call it the Bone Orchard or can I still call it the Blooming Grove?”

“You can call it whatever you’d like to call it. If the Blooming Grove makes you happy, then that’s what you shall call it,” Cornelius reached over and wiped away the tears and snot from his son's furred face. “I can’t guarantee what the rest of the world will call it. Everyone fears what they do not understand, and it seems that we understand it a little better than they do.” He placed his forehead against his sons and nuzzled his nose against his, making Caduceus giggle. “Come now. Your mother is cooking and you know how cranky your sisters get when they have to wait.” 

Now Caduceus is older, much older than when he was a child asking his father why strangers he would probably never meet named his home in such a way that made them happy. People still called his home the Bone Orchard, and while it was a name he wasn’t particularly fond of it, he didn’t care about it all that much anymore. Let them call it what they want, he thought. It was his home, not theirs and if he wanted to call it a place where flowers grew and the dead moved on, then he’s going to and there would be nobody stop him.

Because strangers are going to do things that help them cope with the unknown, and outsiders just fear what they don’t understand instead of trying to understand it. And Caduceus was fine with that- the Bone Orchard sounded more ominous anyway. It gave strangers who only knew of them through their false name alone something to fear and a surprise when they met any of the Clay’s.

Caduceus liked being a surprise almost as much as he liked living in the Blooming Grove.

**Author's Note:**

> I really wanted to write something about the way Fjord was treated during that encounter with the blacksmith and everything that happened with the foreman and stuff but NOT TONIGHT DAMN IT.


End file.
